For Romney, a Role of Faith and Authority

The Mormon Temple in Belmont, Mass. When initial plans in 1996 called for a larger structure, incensed neighbors filed suit. Mitt Romney tried to smooth relations between the church and the town.Credit
Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

BELMONT, Mass. — In ticking off his credentials on the campaign trail — management consultant, businessman, governor — Mitt Romney omits what may have been his most distinctive post: Mormon lay leader, offering pastoral guidance on all manner of human affairs from marriage to divorce, abortion, adoption, addiction, unemployment and even business disputes.

Bryce Clark was a recipient of Mr. Romney’s spiritual advice. Late one summer night in 1993, distraught over his descent into alcoholism and drug use, Mr. Clark, then a 19-year-old college student, decided to confess that he had strayed from his Mormon faith. So he drove through this well-heeled Boston suburb to Mr. Romney’s secluded seven-bedroom home.

As the highest-ranking Mormon leader in Boston, Mr. Romney was responsible for determining whether Mr. Clark was spiritually fit for a mission, a rite of passage for young Mormon men. Mr. Clark had previously lied to him, insisting that he was eligible to go. But instead of condemnation that night, Mr. Clark said, Mr. Romney offered counsel that the younger man has clung to for years.

“He told me that, as human beings, our work isn’t measured by taking the sum of our good deeds and the sum of our bad deeds and seeing how things even out,” recalled Mr. Clark, now 37, sober and working as a filmmaker in Utah. “He said, ‘The only thing you need to think about is: Are you trying to improve, are you trying to do better? And if you are, then you’re a saint.’ ”

That encounter with Mr. Clark provides a rare glimpse into the way Mr. Romney — now a Republican candidate for president — expresses his faith and exercised authority as a religious leader. From 1981 through 1994, he was a powerful figure in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is run almost entirely by volunteers beyond its headquarters in Salt Lake City.

First as bishop of his own congregation, and later as Boston “stake president,” overseeing a region akin to a Roman Catholic diocese, he operated as clergyman, organization man and defender of the faith, guiding the church through a tumultuous period of rapid growth.

He confronted anti-Mormon sentiment and management challenges, supervising youth programs, the church’s social welfare system, missionary training and outreach to Hispanic, Portuguese and Southeast Asian converts, including Cambodian and Laotian refugees whose teenagers were joining the church in droves.

Later, when his official duties were complete, he contributed handsomely to the construction of the grand — and controversial — Boston Temple, high on a hilltop in Belmont, its steeple topped by a golden angel, just minutes from the Romney home. “Mitt’s Temple,” some local residents called it derisively.

Some Mormons, like Mr. Clark, found Mr. Romney thoughtful and compassionate; one mother recalled his kindness to her dying son. Others, including a group of Mormon feminists demanding a greater role for women, found him condescending, doctrinaire or just plain bossy. He clashed with a married mother of four who sought to terminate a pregnancy; the incident made news years later, when Mr. Romney ran for United States Senate as a supporter of abortion rights — a position he has since abandoned.

“Mitt is the type who liked to be called Bishop Romney or President Romney,” said Judy Dushku, a professor of government at Suffolk University in Boston and a Mormon feminist leader. “He is very conscious of his place in the hierarchy, but not yours.”

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Mitt Romney was a Mormon leader before politics.Credit
Boston Globe

Mr. Romney declined to be interviewed for this article. Facing a primary electorate in which Christian conservatives are a powerful force, he is trying to keep his religion from becoming a barrier to his election. When his faith has become an issue — a Texas pastor supporting a rival candidate recently proclaimed Mormonism “a cult” — Mr. Romney has not offered a full-throated defense, but instead called for civility.

But here in Belmont, where Mormons estimate their population at 500 in a town of 25,000, Mr. Romney’s fellow congregants, many of them professionals and academics, are accustomed to hearing him talk of his beliefs. Mr. Romney has traded his large home for a townhouse; just a few months ago, he stepped to the lectern during a Sunday service to deliver what Tony Kimball, a retired professor of government, called a “traditional Mormon testimony,” in which he proclaimed his faith in Jesus as his savior.

Mr. Kimball, a close aide when Mr. Romney was stake president, says culture, rather than political calculus, may keep candidate Romney from talking about faith. “It’s kind of considered bad form by a lot of Mormons to wear it on your lapel,” he said, “and Mitt is not that way.”

Deep Church Roots

Mr. Romney has an impeccable Mormon pedigree. His family traces its church lineage to 1837; a great-great-grandfather, Miles Romney, began following the first Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, that year, and later trekked to Utah with the early Mormon pioneers. As son of one of the nation’s most prominent Mormons — George W. Romney, a former Michigan governor and presidential candidate — Mitt Romney seemed destined for a prominent position in the church.

In 1971, Mr. Romney arrived in Boston to attend a joint program at the Harvard Business and Law Schools. He had completed a Mormon mission in France, graduated from Brigham Young University and was already married with a son. On weekends, he and other young Mormons would take overnight bus trips to the nearest Mormon temple, outside Washington, to perform sacred rituals, like baptism for the dead.

“Most of us would yak or sleep on the bus, or read a book,” recalled one of the participants, Helen Claire Sievers. “Mitt was always working.”

It was an early hint of the intensity and business acumen that would make Mr. Romney rich as the founder of Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity firm. He used those same skills, in salesmanship, deal making, organization, networking and public relations, as a steward of the church.

He was highly motivated and “hands-on,” said Philip Barlow, a professor at Utah State University, who as a graduate student was one of Mr. Romney’s top aides as bishop. If somebody’s roof leaked, Mr. Romney would show up with a ladder to fix it. Mr. Barlow remembers Mr. Romney picking butternut squash and yanking weeds on the church’s communal farm.

When young Southeast Asian converts began joining gangs, Mr. Romney set up small storefront churches in rough areas of town, with the hope of drawing them back. When the approach did not work, he shut the branches down. Every other Sunday, he convened his high council — akin to a president’s cabinet — to discuss operational matters.

“He would run it like a business, and he would listen to us,” said Mick Watson, a Brandeis University graduate school dean and one of the councilors. “But Mitt, of course, was in charge — he was always in charge.”

That take-charge attitude sometimes rankled in a setting where people yearned for consensus.

Ron Scott, a journalist and Mormon who has written a forthcoming biography of Mr. Romney, remembered how, when he moved to Boston, Mr. Romney asked him to run public affairs for the church — and then proceeded to tell him precisely how to do the job. “He had more of an imperious approach,” Mr. Scott said. “He wanted to direct everything.”

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Bryce Clark said Mr. Romney was a thoughtful and compassionate leader.Credit
Michael Friberg for The New York Times

Yet he proved himself an effective salesman for his faith. Shortly after he became bishop, at age 34, with five young sons, the church announced plans for a new meetinghouse in Belmont, on a wooded, 14-acre plot. Townspeople were suspicious. “The tenor was, ‘The Mormons are moving in,’ ” said Grant Bennett, who succeeded Mr. Romney as bishop. In 1984, with the construction almost complete, the meetinghouse burned down. Officials suspected arson.

Soon Mr. Romney was flooded with offers from other churches wanting to lend their buildings. Sensing an opportunity to strengthen community ties, he accepted them all, and the Mormons of Belmont rotated from one house of worship to another for a year while theirs was being rebuilt.

It was not the last time Mr. Romney would try to smooth church-town relations. In 1996, church leaders in Salt Lake announced plans for a granite temple — 94,000 square feet with six soaring spires — on a hilltop adjacent to the Belmont meetinghouse. (Unlike Mormon meetinghouses, Mormon temples are reserved for sacred ceremonies, and non-Mormons may step no farther than the lobby.) Incensed neighbors filed suit.

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Mr. Romney, fearing he would become a lightning rod after his Senate loss to Edward M. Kennedy in 1994, kept a relatively low profile. He and his wife, Ann, hosted meetings in their home so the neighbors could meet the architects, and perhaps sort their differences out. He spoke in favor of the project at a public hearing. His tithe — Mormons are expected to give the church 10 percent of their income — helped foot the $30 million bill.

But mostly, said Scott Ferson, a public relations executive (and former Kennedy aide) who helped calm tensions, Mr. Romney functioned as high-level adviser, a liaison between Boston and Salt Lake. The project was eventually built, albeit on a smaller scale.

“He was kind of a Big Mormon,” Mr. Ferson said of Mr. Romney. “A lot of people would say, ‘Let’s see what Mitt thinks.’ ”

Hewing the Line

As a Senate candidate, Mr. Romney angered higher-ups in Salt Lake with his independent stance on abortion; he said that he was personally opposed, but favored laws allowing women to choose. But earlier as a church leader, he hewed much more closely to the official Mormon view.

Mormons oppose abortion, except in extreme cases like rape, incest or where the life of the woman is in danger — and require that church elders be consulted. In 1990, Exponent II, a Mormon feminist magazine that Ms. Dushku, the Suffolk University professor, helped found, published an article by a married mother of four who recounted her own experience after doctors advised her to terminate her pregnancy when she was being treated for a potentially dangerous blood clot.

Her bishop got wind of the situation, she wrote, and showed up unannounced at the hospital, warning her sternly not to go forward. The article did not identify Mr. Romney as the bishop, but Ms. Dushku later did.

Now the woman has come forward, identifying herself in Mr. Scott’s book as Carrel Hilton Sheldon. (Through Ms. Dushku, she declined to be interviewed.) “Mitt has many, many winning qualities,” she is quoted as saying, “but at the time he was blind to me as a human being.”

“I don’t think he’s an evil, unfeeling, uncaring kind of guy,” Mr. Scott said. “He was a brand new bishop, he was pretty young to begin with, my sense is he was pretty full of himself, and he thought that he would not fulfill his obligation as bishop if he didn’t press the matter.”

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Judy Dushku had a different take on Mr. Romney's leadership and said she she saw hypocrisy and callousness.Credit
Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

But if Mr. Romney was blind in that instance, his time as an ecclesiastical leader may have also opened his eyes. Having been raised in wealth and privilege, he was now exposed to hardship and human suffering, especially among Boston’s immigrant populations. “I had no idea people lived this way,” Mr. Barlow recalls him saying.

A Reserved Demeanor

Ted Oparowski, a retired firefighter, and his wife, Pat, a secretary, still praise Mr. Romney for ministering to their 14-year-old son, David, who was dying of cancer three decades ago.

The boy, upon hearing that Mr. Romney was a lawyer, asked him to help draft a will, so that he might leave something to each of his friends. Mr. Romney pulled out a legal pad, and together they wrote one up. Later, he gave the eulogy at the boy’s funeral.

If Mr. Romney, who no longer holds an official church title, seems overly polished or wooden on the campaign trail, his defenders say that is just how he is, reserved yet caring. “He’s always been that way, that’s his demeanor,” Mrs. Oparowski said.

Because the church imposes such heavy volunteer obligations on its members, much of Mr. Romney’s work involved functioning as a cheerleader to keep things up and running. When a congregant asked to be released from his church duties during a difficult divorce, Mr. Romney said no; he did not want to send a message that divorced people could not serve.

When Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business professor, and his wife, Christine, felt overwhelmed by church obligations, Mr. Romney showed up unexpectedly at the door. With three young children, Mr. Christensen was in charge of missionary work; his wife ran the relief society, ministering to Boston’s poor.

“He said, ‘I was just driving home from work, and I had a feeling that I needed to stop by and tell you that God loves you.’ ” Mr. Christensen was so moved, he recalled, that he wept.

On the night in 1993 that Mr. Clark, the filmmaker, arrived at the Romney home here, Mr. Romney greeted him in a white business shirt, dress slacks and bedroom slippers. He was waiting at the door; the young man’s parents had called ahead.

The Clarks and the Romneys had been close for years — Mr. Clark’s father, Kim, now president of Brigham Young University’s campus in Rexburg, Idaho, was then dean of the Harvard Business School — and Mr. Romney had been the family’s “home teacher.” For nearly a decade, he made monthly visits to the Clark home, checking on the family’s welfare and serving up Gospel lessons to the seven Clark children.

The Romney house, Mr. Clark remembers, was quiet. Mr. Romney ushered him into the library, and they spoke for more than an hour. “He talked a lot about the Savior, and what the atonement means,” Mr. Clark said. “He said, ‘I just want you to know you are not alone.’ ”

In the months and years that followed, Mr. Romney wrote the young man notes of encouragement, frequently reminding him of what he had said that summer night, about always “trying to improve.” Mr. Clark says he still has them.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on October 16, 2011, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Romney, a Role of Faith and Authority. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe